Thrills, Chills and Goldfish
by HedgieX
Summary: The Chief Con's daughter is found brutally murdered and covered in dead goldfish behind a burger van at the fair. News crews are already swarming, and so Gill and an already-exhausted Julie are instructed to liaise and deal with the fallout. Wine-covered bed sheets, yellow and pink duck pyjamas, and the customary Gill/Julie banter with angst thrown in.
1. Chapter 1

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 1**

Julie had just gone to bed, glass of red wine in hand, when her phone rang. In the not-really-with-it mind set of someone who hasn't slept for 48 hours straight, she succeeded in sloshing wine all over the bed covers before she actually answered the phone.

"Dobson," she said.

"_Dodson_."

She scrubbed at the wine spillage with her nails, and succeeded in making a blood-coloured hand print on her pillow case as she leant back against the wall, "What? Who is it?"

"Your name's Dodson."

"Oh, piss off, you. I'm tired."

"Well, you're going to get tireder still," Gill said cheerily, pausing as though to consider whether 'tireder' was actually a word, "A body's been found behind the burger and chip trailer thingy at the fair, and I've been instructed to liaise with you."

"At two in the morning?"

"Did you actually want a decent night's sleep? Greedy bitch."

Julie pushed back the damp covers and felt her way around the end of the bed to the wardrobe, blindly selecting a shirt and trousers. It'd probably be a striped pink and orange number, coupled with some brown corduroys or something, knowing her luck. She tucked the phone between her ear and slipped her nightie off downwards.

"What are we liaising about?"

"You sound out of breath. Don't tell me you've got someone with you. Oh God, Dodson, or Dobson, or whatever her name is, has pulled for the first time in years, and now she's being dragged away to deal with a mangled body covered in dead goldfish. I'm so sorry."

"I've got a cold, Gill. And I'm trying to get dressed."

"Right," Gill said slowly, "You aren't wearing those really attractive yellow and pink duck pyjamas, by any chance, are you? You could just keep them on, save yourself time and give us something to smile about. That'd kill two ducks with one stone."

Julie wrinkled her nose as Gill laughed at her own joke. _Mad bitch._ She pulled her trousers on with one hand; at least they felt smooth, so she'd avoided a corduroy disaster.

"Covered in _dead goldfish_?"

"Your reaction time is only about five minutes. Yes, the poor girl's been beaten to a pulp, and then covered in goldfish. Delightful. The killer certainly gets top marks for originality."

Julie found the light switch and sat down at her desk to apply some make-up, then realised she actually still had yesterday's on, or was it the day before yesterday's? She ran her fingers through her hair half-heartedly.

"Anyway, the reason we're supposed to be liaising – and you might want to be sitting down for this – is that the dead girl in question is the Chief Con's daughter, _was _the Chief Con's daughter, so obviously it's–"

"What, Rutterford's daughter? Jesus."

"She is, was, eighteen years old. According to one officer I've already spoken to who knew the family personally, she was a bit of a roughian, but– Of course it's going to be massively high-profile, there's vultures swarming everywhere already," Gill's tone was more serious now, "And the Assistant Chief Con wants your syndicate and mine to work together, so–"

Julie didn't feel quite so asleep any more. Lucky she'd only had a sip of the wine. "Text me the postcode; I'll meet you there once I've had my coffee. And put my sheets in the wash."

"I'm not even going to ask."

XxXxX

The sun was peeking over the carousel ride when Julie pulled up outside the gates of the fair. _We offer thrills and chills_ was painted across the safety fencing in fluorescent spray-paint; she thought that was a rather apt slogan for such a murder scene.

"Morning, Slap," Gill greeted her as she pulled her blue suit up (over black trousers and a blue shirt; she'd been pleasantly surprised by her adroitness when choosing clothes in the dark), "Come on, it's over there."

Gill held up the cordon for Julie, and then showed her into the tent. The remains of the girl were literally splattered over the floor behind the chip van; chunks of flesh were scattered around, her clothes tattered and darkened with blood. The goldfish were lying dead in the pools of blood, as though they'd managed to shuffle forwards towards liquid, only to realise that blood didn't work quite the same as water.

"Blimey," Julie said.

"I said something along those lines," Gill crouched down beside the body, "Her name was Natalie Johnson; she took her mother's name when her parents divorced. I think it might have been bitter. Unfortunately we're going to have to dredge up all of the Chief Con's past now, although I suppose that'll be nothing compared to this."

"Has someone told him?"

"Yes. An unenviable job."

They went back outside. There was a queue of officers alongside the candyfloss van opposite, placing coins on the surface in return for helping themselves to sticks of rock and bags of pink squishy mushrooms. Julie winced at the way Gill's voice cut the early morning air as she yelled at them all to have some respect.

Gill looked sideways at her friend, "You look like shit, by the way."

"I feel like it. I've not slept for days."

"Aw," she said, with as much sympathy as it was possible for Gill to convey. They reached the huddle of officers waiting for some sort of guidance as to where they should begin, when dealing with the brutal murder of the offspring of one of their own. She clapped her hands.

"I want all the usual. I want any CCTV, although I'm not holding out any hopes for that, I want all the intel on the bus routes. I want witness statements, I mean, they're all in the caravans over there, of course they're going to deny everything but _someone_ must have seen _something_. I want to know about security arrangements."

"What we doing?" Julie asked.

"Going back to the nick once we've sorted this lot out," Gill said, "We'll see if we can't get Kevin to cook you up something for breakfast."

XxXxX


	2. Chapter 2

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 2  
**

"Boss," Kevin called breathlessly, bursting into Gill's office without a knock and glancing between her and Julie, like he didn't know which of them he was addressing.

"Have you brought something for Detective Superintendent Dodson's breakfast?"

"Yes," he thrust a pain au chocolat, wrapped in a spotty pink napkin, at Julie, and then turned back to Gill, "But Boss, they want you downstairs."

"Are you going to tell me why, Kevin?"

Julie, attempting to look pleased by the pastry, although the smell was actually making her feel nauseous, was glad Gill had taken charge. She loved her friend's office, with its slightly wonky blinds, and the inevitable pair of glasses dumped on the desk. Her own office was impersonal.

"Apparently the Chief Con went to the fair and tried to get in the tent, and they had to drag him away, and now he's downstairs, and they want you to go and see him."

"Why do I do this job?"

"Because you like bossin' me around."

"Oh, I wouldn't have the strength to come into work each morning if I didn't know you'd be waiting for me," Gill arched one eyebrow, "The lions' den awaits. You stay here with the superintendent."

"Boss–"

"She's not going to eat you, Kevin. You're going to have a job keeping her awake, quite frankly."

"I'm fine, Gill."

"You really haven't slept in days, have you?"

Gill's hand squeezed Julie's shoulder briefly as she brushed past her. The action was unlike anything Julie expected from Gill normally; it made her fingers tremble around the pain au chocolat. Gill wouldn't undermine Julie's authority in front of Kevin, she wasn't like that, but Julie knew what she was saying. _Pull yourself together, you're no use like this._

"Well, wish me luck," Gill said grimly.

"Y'alright, Ma'am? Should I get you a coffee?" Kevin asked Julie as Gill weaved her way through the desks, muttered something to Janet and disappeared out of view.

"That would be nice, Kevin."

His eyes widened like he'd been expecting her to shout, and her soft response was a surprise. "Coming right up, Ma'am." He pointed to the pain au chocolat. "Are you going to eat that, or can I have it?"

XxXxX

"Sir," Gill said, running her hands down the back of her skirt as she sat, and then leaning her elbows on the table and looking directly into the Chief Constable's swollen eyes, "Mr Rutterford. I'm so sorry."

She thought of the way Kevin tended to spend extended periods of time hiding in the canteen when Rutterford was doing a round of the syndicates, everyone fussing around tidying their desks and making him multiple mugs of coffee, the notable lightness in the office when he'd left.

She thought how different he looked now, already the shadows setting into his face as they did in the faces of all parents mourning their stolen child. It was frightening, the switch from the man everyone respected, even feared, to this; she wondered how far press conferences and meetings about police procedure were from his mind now. How far would they be from her own mind if she'd lost Sammy in this way? _Jesus_.

The door opened again before it had fully shut after Gill's arrival, and a young policeman with hair that was rather too groomed for Gill's liking peered around the door and fixed his eyes on Rutterford, "Your– your–"

"Ms. Johnson's here?" Gill suggested.

"Yes, Ma'am," he ran a hand through his hair again, his eyes still not leaving Rutterford. He was like a child who couldn't quite believe adults cried, they wanted to reach out and touch the tears. "Should I– can she–"

"Would it be okay if Ms. Johnson came in, Sir?"

Rutterford gave a half-nod.

The woman let into the room looked more ghastly than her ex-husband; her hair was tangled as her daughter's had been when they'd found her, her eyes fluorescent with tears. She sank down in the chair beside Rutterford, and their hands found each other.

Gill imagined it might have been like that if Sammy had been murdered, she wouldn't have cared about Dave's betrayal, she wouldn't have cared about much at all as long as someone was doing something to find the killer. She really needed to stop thinking about Sammy dying; the palms of her hands were damp with uneasiness.

"Sir, is it okay if I call you Roger?"

She remembered Kevin giggling when he'd first found out the Chief Con's first name: "Roger Rutterford? He sounds like someone from Balamory or something."

"Are you a big fan of CBBC, Kevin?" She felt like she was surrounded by children for a significant proportion of her time at work. And at home, of course. Most of her life was spent trying to show people how to grow up.

He gave another stiff nod. _I don't give a damn what you call me now._

"Roger," she said softly, "Catherine. When was the last time you saw your daughter?"

"Yesterday morning," Catherine sobbed into the black sleeve of her cardigan, "She was going to school, it was her final A-level exam, in English. She was so happy it was finally over, you know, all the– the stress was done with, she could just relax– she works so hard, all year round. She got into York for university. She could've gone to Oxford, Cambridge, but she decided on York, she always– always loved the place, ever since she was little. She wanted to be a police officer, like– she was so proud of him, she was–"

It was something Gill was accustomed with, the muddling of tenses when a loved one had just died, knowing they should speak in the past tense but being unable to accept that the person was gone forever.

"She was proud of everyone in the family. We were proud of her. She was such a good girl," Roger said, his eyes bubbling with tears, like molten sugar bubbles in the oven, "So very loving, she never judged anyone. She never complained, she always wanted to help everyone."

Gill had never heard Rutterford speak of his family, had never really known he had one, although she remembered how the gossip surrounding his divorce had spread like wildfire in the canteen, just as Dave's shenanigans had been known to everyone else before Gill had found out.

She supposed she didn't speak of Sammy very often. Maybe she should talk about him more; maybe she should say all of these things, she should say how supportive he was of her when she'd had a bad day, how he was strong and brave. _I want to be like you, _he'd said. Perhaps the proudest moment of her life, and yet she'd never shared it with anyone, always wanted to keep it wholly for herself. What if he was gone and nobody knew?

Stop thinking about Sammy, Gill.

"When did you last see her, Roger?"

"Last weekend. She stayed at my house at weekends. We went out for Sunday lunch, we had beef and Yorkshire puddings at the pub, it was–" His voice trailed off into non-existence, his tears overpowering his desire to talk about Natalie.

"Can we see her?" Catherine pleaded.

Roger saw the look in Gill's eyes and took his ex-wife in his arms again. Gill couldn't make out the meaning of the whispers, but she could guess. The Chief Con understood that no good could possibly come from seeing the mangled mess that had once been his daughter, however hard that was to accept.

XxXxX


	3. Chapter 3

**My Scott&Bailey series three DVD arrived this morning *happy face* I haven't actually taken it out of the plastic packaging yet because I've been too busy fangirling over the pictures on the cover.**

**Thank you for your lovely reviews for the last two chapters! x**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 3**

Gill thrust a bag of sterilised clothing at Julie by way of greeting when she arrived at the morgue. "Hurry up and get changed. It's Scary Mary today, and you know she doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"Since when have you cared what Scary Mary likes?"

"Since the Chief Con's daughter was murdered," Gill said, watching dispassionately as Julie pulled the blue suit up over her clothes, "I can't risk anyone getting disgruntled; whether it's a pathologist or a lowly PC, I can't risk them blabbing to the vultures."

"How was Mr Rutterford?"

"As you might expect, distraught."

Julie couldn't help but think the 'as you might expect' was a dig at the fact that Julie didn't have any children of her own, and therefore _didn't_ really know what you might expect. She let it pass. Gill always seemed highly strung, cold even, when she was fired up in the middle of a case; it wasn't anything personal.

"You stopped playing the dripping Alice now?"

She smiled, letting that pass too. She wasn't going to tell Gill that, actually, no, she felt just as shit as she had done earlier. Or that she'd allowed Kevin to eat her breakfast.

When Julie had tied her hair up, secured her hood and fastened the face mask securely over her nose and mouth (which always made her feel a little like a dentist; she couldn't put a finger on why, seeing as doctors and scientists and woodworkers all also wore similar masks), Gill led the way into the examination room, where Mary was just opening a plastic bag of gleaming silver equipment.

"Where do you want me to start?"

"Swabs," Gill said, her voice muffled by the mask she'd pulled up, "See if she's been interfered with; get those results sent away for. They've already tried for fingerprints but it was a complete mess, just blood everywhere."

Julie looked away as Mary peeled back what were left of Natalie's school trousers and knickers. _Eighteen years old._ She was just a girl, a daughter, and now she'd lost the chance to be a wife or a mother.

"Any weapon recovered at the scene?"

"Not that we've found, but it's filled with hidey-holes, it's going to take days to comb the entire fairground."

"Something heavy," Mary said, examining Natalie's head, "Probably smooth, maybe a cylinder shape, like a cricket bat or something. It's done a lot of damage."

Gill leant forwards to look, "They've basically knocked her skull in."

"And her ribs. It feels like several of them are broken."

"Can a cricket bat really do that much damage?"

"You'd be surprised by what a cricket bat can do," Mary muttered, "Perhaps not a cricket bat, probably not heavy enough. A metal pole?"

"Mm, there's going to be plenty of them at a fair, I'd imagine," Gill said, turning to Julie for her input, "Are you with us?"

"Yeah, of course. Well, there's yards of security fencing around the perimeter. They could have used one of the supporting beams."

"Supposedly to keep people out at night," Gill added tartly, "Are we presuming a male, then? They'd have to be pretty strong to hit her with that sort of force, wouldn't they? Her brains are all over the back of the burger van."

"I'd say undoubtedly male. Or the female world champion at boxing."

"Stomach contents?"

Julie looked away again as Mary took up her scalpel. She didn't know why she felt so nauseous today. If she didn't know better she'd think she was pregnant, it felt like that had done. That was something she'd never told Gill, all those times when she'd gone round to help send a drunken Dave packing; they'd always talked about Gill, and never about Julie.

Gill made an 'ooh' sound, as though she was watching a pantomime and the baddy had just crept onto the stage, "Is that what I think it is?"

Julie stepped forwards to look and found a grotesque picture, jagged flesh where the scalpel had cut into the girl's stomach, and then inside a mound of sticky pink goo, like a cartoon bear had blown sugary kisses inside of her.

"Half-digested candyfloss," Mary said triumphantly.

XxXxX

"She actually ran out?" Rachel smirked, swinging herself up onto the desk and cradling her coffee between her knees as she talked to Janet.

"Apparently so. Gill's not impressed," Janet said, proceeding to do a surprisingly good imitation of Gill, "_She's a Detective Superintendent, Janet, she's seen more bodies than me, and that's no small feat, what's she doing suddenly babying around because it's the Chief Con's kid?_ And so on."

"Candyfloss, though, I guess it might've been a bit upsetting, with her being a kid and all that."

"Gill said she's been acting funny all day. She probably just needs a good night's sleep, poor woman; you know Gill forgets how to be lenient with people when she's stressed. Julie's gone home now, anyway. It'll all be forgotten by morning."

"Yeah, but–"

"What are you two talking about?"

"Just the case, Ma'am," Rachel ad-libbed as Gill leant over the computer monitor and stared at the junior detective, "You know, the candyfloss, what that means."

"What does that mean?"

"She'd– well, she'd eaten candyfloss, Ma'am."

"I'd advise you both to stop discussing my relations with other officers, and instead to get on with whatever you're supposed to be doing to bring whichever bastard has done this to Natalie Johnson to justice."

"Think she needs a nap, too," Rachel muttered as Gill stormed out of the office.

"_She'd eaten candyfloss, Ma'am._ Oh, Rachel, you really know how to piss her off," Janet laughed, then grimaced, well aware that it wasn't really very funny.

"I've just seen Her Maj in the corridor," Lee said, leaning over the computer and offering Janet and Rachel a biscuit from the box he was clutching, "She said, and I quote, 'get one of those slackers to ring Detective Superintendent Dodson, and tell her to be in my office at eight o'clock tomorrow morning'."

"You're an angel, Lee," Janet said, taking the last Jammy Dodger before Rachel could get her hands on it, "Although I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that 'slackers' meant she was referring to us."

"She has a special glare she reserves for when she's talking about Rachel."

"That makes sense," Janet split apart the two halves of the biscuit and licked the cream out of the centre, "Looks like you've got yourself a job, Rach."

"Mm-hm. Can I have one off the next layer, Lee?"

XxXxX


	4. Chapter 4

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 4**

"What?" Gill snapped when Janet knocked on her office door.

"I'm sorry, Gill, but it can't wait."

"Something about Detective Superintendent Dobson?" Gill slipped off her glasses and folded them on the keyboard. Janet was so used to seeing her do it that it almost comforted her now; everyone needed some things to stay the same. "No doubt called in sick. Because of her candyfloss phobia? Or alcoholism?"

"No, it's– another body's been found, a couple of miles south of the fair."

"Shit. _Shit_," Gill slammed the palms of her hands down on her desk, "Another girl?"

"Yeah. Seems like the same MO; in the gutter outside a fast-food shop, smashed skull, blood everywhere."

"Do we know who she is?"

"Not at the moment."

Janet knew what Gill was thinking. It would just be the icing on the cake if the second girl was the daughter of another high-profile figure in Manchester. No doubt her inspector would be hoping it'd be someone normal, hoping it would disvalue the headlines about the Chief Con's daughter being murdered by an ex-con seeking revenge after his release. Wasn't it terrible to _wish_ that sort of death on someone? Whoever she was, whether her family were high-profile or not, she'd just been denied a future.

"You haven't had a call from Julie, then?"

"No. Rachel rang her yesterday; she didn't pick up, so Rach left her a voicemail telling her you'd like to see her at eight."

Both women automatically glanced towards the clock on the wall: it was nearing half past eight now. Janet saw Gill's shoulders slump a little.

"Is something wrong between you two?"

"I don't know, Janet," Gill sighed, pushing back her chair and reaching for her coat, "You know what it's like when it's all go at work, you know how your relationships suffer. It's normally Sammy who cops it, but Julie was just– it's nothing really."

"I'm sure it'll all blow over soon."

Gill buttoned up her coat, "I'm going to head down to the scene. If by any chance she turns up, send her down after me, will you?"

XxXxX

Julie sat huddled up in bed with the duvet wrapped tight around her and a pile of photos scattered on her lap. She ran her thumb down the side of the pile, caught brief glimpses of her childhood; in one she was standing on the beach with a towel around her waist (she was so slim, once) and in another she was sitting on the wall, brandishing a certificate for something or other.

She rolled over onto her side and reached down for her phone, which she'd switched off and dropped to the floor the evening before when it kept vibrating with a bombardment of texts from a drunken friend.

_I no we havnt talked in ages jules but I love you & I want u 2 now how much u mean to me, _followed by _We realy need to maat up sopn juls I realy miss you xxxxxx _a couple of hours later. The man – yes, a man sending six kisses – in question was a relatively senior police officer, for God's sake. Julie would've found it funny normally, but she didn't have the strength.

When she turned on the phone she discovered a voicemail, DC Rachel Bailey from Gill's syndicate telling her to be in Gill's office by eight. The clock in the top right-hand corner of the screen told her it was 8:57. Gill would be spitting feathers by now, the telling-off she'd get didn't bear thinking about. Although come to think of it, Gill shouldn't really be telling Julie off, given that Julie was actually the superior officer.

Why did Gill do this, make everything about rank when it should've been a question of friendship? Why had she been so snappy yesterday, when she knew full well Julie would've supported her if Gill had been the one feeling under the weather?

It felt a bit worse than 'under the weather' now, it was practically buried in a swamp beneath a storm. Her head was throbbing, and she kept shivering even though she was swaddled like a new-born baby. She'd managed to continue working whilst she had the flu in November last years; she hadn't had a day off in years, but this felt worse than that.

She threw the phone down onto the duvet. As if in protest, the phone began to ring out, some stupid jangly tune she'd obviously set when she was tipsy. "Hello?"

"Julie, it's Janet. Janet Scott, from Syndicate Nine?"

_The fallout had begun_. "Sorry Janet, I've only just got the message about–" She broke off to cough, her throat felt like it was clogged up with damp cotton wool balls. "About the meeting with Gill, I'm–"

"You don't sound too good."

"No, I'm a bit– is Gill angry with me?" She only realised after she'd said it how feeble and childlike that sounded. Her brain seemed to be a bit behind her speech. "I mean, was it anything important?"

"She was a bit warpath-ish," Janet laughed, "But no, she's alright. I actually rang to tell you about a development in the case: another body's been found a few miles away, another young girl, same MO."

"Oh, God."

"That's all we know as yet, Gill's at the scene now. Although obviously you don't really want to know any of that if you're feeling iffy."

"No, no, thanks for– for–" she broke off and coughed into her duvet to try to muffle the harshness of the sound, "For keeping me in the loop."

"Make sure you get some rest, yeah? I'll tell Gill you won't be in work. And I'll get her to ring you later, if she's got a minute."

"Thanks."

"Ta-ta, then."

Julie dropped the phone again, and this time it stayed silent. She coughed into the corner of the duvet again and it came away partly dark red in her hand; at first she thought it was a splash of wine she'd not noticed (she'd still not changed her sheets, she hadn't had the energy to do it last night) but then she realised it was a few drops of blood. _Shit_, coughing up blood probably wasn't good, was it? Probably just caught her tongue on something; blood always looked worse than it was, she'd learnt that over time.

She flicked through the pile of photos again, and this time found the one she'd been looking for. Of course she'd ripped up the scan photos, she'd been unable to stand having them in the house, but there was one she'd kept; a photograph of the things she'd bought, early on, when she was unsure if it'd be a girl or a boy. She'd emailed the photograph to her mother by way of telling her she was pregnant, and her mother had been delighted at the concept of becoming a grandmother.

It showed a creamy cardigan with engraved buttons, a little pair of stripey orange socks, and the locket Julie had bought ready to put a picture of her baby – she'd found out later it'd be a little boy, her baby boy – in, so he'd always be against her heart. Only he never had been, she hadn't even held him. James, she would've called him James.

_As you might expect._ Gill hadn't been right when she'd implied Julie didn't understand what it was like to lose a child.

Gill really didn't have a clue what Julie understood.

XxXxX


	5. Chapter 5

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 5**

"The second girl is called Hazel Jordan, sixteen years ago. The daughter of a reasonably high-profile London banker; he goes to the City and lives there Monday to Friday, then lives here in Manchester at the weekends. He and his wife got divorced nine years ago, when Hazel was seven, I don't think it was a secret he used to _socialise_ with women at parties and such in London."

Gill saw Janet's eyes shift in sympathy at the way she said 'socialise'. Of course, it was public knowledge what had happened with Dave, everyone else knew before Gill did. It had hurt her more than she'd ever admit to anyone; she always liked to pretend she was unbreakable, particularly for Sammy's sake.

"An aunt, Sian Jordan, looks after her Mondays and Tuesdays, she sees her mother, Lana Benson-Jordon – yes, don't ask – Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and then she sees her dad Saturday, Sunday."

"Not a very settled existence," Pete said.

"She was reported missing a couple of days ago, when the aunt and the mother each realised she wasn't with the other one. Sian Jordan says she was a real daddy's girl, which is a bit ironic if he was never there, especially given that he was the one who slept around. Poor kid, I'm not sure she was really wanted by anyone."

Janet tapped her pen against the desk as everyone digested this, "Are the results back from the first crime scene?"

"Yes, nothing. I don't think there'll be anything at the second one, either," Gill said, turning to the board, "In terms of the similarity of the cases, it's a bloody big coincidence if they're not connected, and I don't believe in the smallest of coincidences. Both young women, both have rich parents, both attacked in the same manner."

"And the fast food shop is kind of the same idea as the burger van. You know, they're both, like, fast food?"

"Indeed, Kevin," she said dryly, "We don't think Natalie Johnson was interfered with sexually before her death, which I'm a bit surprised about, because it seemed sexually motivated to me, as if she'd been groomed, perhaps because of her father's status. If Hazel Jordan's the same, then we'll have to look at a different motive, although there are plenty of options; perhaps because the killer wants the news splashed across the tabloids, he wants to feel like he's got that sort of power."

"Was it definitely a man, then?"

Gill nodded in Rachel's direction, "In Scary Mary's words, she would have to be the world champion at boxing if it was a woman. It was really gruesome, well, both deaths were really gruesome, they involved a lot of power and strength."

After Julie had left (that was still niggling away at her, the way Julie had turned coward when she was normally stronger than Gill, and that was saying something), Scary Mary had gone on to tell Gill that Natalie Johnson had died slowly and painfully; the ribs had probably been broken before her death, the blows to her head were imprecise and bloody, would've caused her agonising pain until she fell unconscious.

"We think she would have died quickly," Gill had told the Chief Con, as she told most victims' families, when it was possible. You didn't want to know the truth, did you? You wanted to be lied to, you wanted to believe their final moments were peaceful.

"So what are we doing, Boss?"

"We're upping patrols massively in the area. We're still examining the CCTV. None at the fair. The fast food shop doesn't have any either, and we think Hazel Jordan died in the early hours of the morning, but there's a Tesco further along the street, so we might be able to isolate someone on that, if we're lucky. Neither of them are built-up areas, both are quite run-down. It was planned, someone calculated everything."

"Yeah, there's still the candyfloss," Janet continued, "Natalie Johnson would've known damn right it was illegal to break in like that, but someone got her to eat it, she was comfortable enough with someone to go with them."

"It wasn't fully digested, so we're thinking she ate it quite soon before her death," Gill said, scrawling things on the board as she spoke, "Scary Mary's going to do Hazel Jordan's post mortem this afternoon; she might have had a burger from the fast-food shop. That'd cement the idea that they're connected."

"Or a kebab."

"Yes, Kevin, or a kebab."

Her team were very attentive this morning, Gill realised, even Kevin. Actually, no, it had turned afternoon now; surely they were desperate to run down to the canteen before all of the chicken tikka paninis were taken, but they didn't show it. There was a sense of solidarity about the horrors of the Chief Con's death, a 'one-of-our-own' feeling. Which was another reason the Julie situation rang even less true.

"You didn't hear from Detective Superintendent Dodson?"

"Oh, I rang her," Janet said, "Sorry, I meant to tell you, but then I got caught up in– anyway, she said she'd only just got Rach's message. She didn't sound very well; she asked me to tell you she wouldn't be coming in. I said I'd get you to ring her later, if you had a spare minute in the midst of this."

Julie was never ill, not really. Gill felt a twinge of guilt for the way she'd spoken to her earlier; looking back, it seemed quite offhand and uncaring, _You stopped playing the dripping Alice now?_ And maybe she shouldn't have badmouthed her to Janet for the candyfloss thing. Maybe it said more about Gill than it did about Julie that one of them had been affected by it and one hadn't. _You hardened your heart._ But she still could've rung to say she wouldn't be in, rather than waiting until Janet had chased her up.

"Right."

"How's the Chief Con, Ma'am?" Lee asked.

That was another thing she'd been a bit snappy with Julie about. Gill didn't really have the right to comment snidely on Julie's choice not to have kids, did she? After all, Gill's perfect family hadn't really worked out the way she'd wanted it to; Julie was probably better off on her own. She seemed comfortable enough as she was.

"He's doing alright. Lee, Janet, I want you two to go down to talk to him and Catherine Johnson now, they're just sitting downstairs waiting for news. Rutterford isn't slow, he'll probably already have connected the two deaths, so don't lie to him, don't try to fob him off, but–"

Janet gave an understanding smile, "We'll be gentle."

"Rachel, Pete, the aunt and mother of Hazel Jordan are coming in, and from what I can gather they really don't get on," Gill said, sighing inwardly. _Did I sign up to deal with so, so much heartbreak?_ "I'm going to break the news to them, but then there'll obviously be a lot of questions, so I'd like you two to deal with that."

Both officers nodded.

"Go and grab something for lunch, everyone, then get on with what you're supposed to be doing. We'll reconvene at three-ish."

_And before then I'll ring Julie and grovel._

XxXxX


	6. Chapter 6

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 6**

Julie went downstairs to make herself something to eat. Her mother's voice rang in her ears, something about eating well when you were ill to build up your strength; she'd talked about that a lot after Julie's miscarriage.

She almost fell down the stairs, though, and had to cling on to the bannister for a few moments until she'd regained her balance, and then she cut her thumb on the ring pull trying to open a tin of soup. She decided it wouldn't be safe to try to heat the soup on the stove in case she set the whole house on fire and burned alive, and by the time she'd come to this conclusion she was too weary to find her way back upstairs again, so she simply huddled up on the sofa and held a cushion to her chest.

Who would notice, if she burned alive? The officers from her syndicate would probably get out the Party Rings.

The blood on her thumb mingled in with the blood that came up in her throat when she coughed, until she couldn't really tell which was which.

The knowledge that another girl had died, and her lack of knowledge about the girl's death, ate away at her. Was it the daughter of another senior police officer? Had she been killed in the same way; had she eaten stolen sweets hours before her death, unaware of what she was about to suffer?

Why had Gill got Janet to ring her, rather than doing it herself? Why was she suddenly so keen to be a bitch?

Julie didn't have many friends, not really, not the type she wanted to know forever, but she'd thought Gill was her friend. She'd thought they meant something to one another, behind the jokey, arsey demeanour.

"When I needed a neighbour, were y–" she sang softly, breaking off to cough again, and suddenly being taken over with frustration, "You weren't fucking there, were you, Gill? You don't give a fucking– fucking–"

She started choking again, and then crying. She didn't know what the hell was wrong with her, really she didn't, wasn't sure she wanted to know, either.

She just wanted to go to sleep until all of this was over, all of the pain in her throat and her chest and her head, all of the confusion she felt about Gill, all of the memories of the child she'd never had that'd been scratched at like scabs.

Bleeding memories, there was some nice imagery for the way she was feeling. Bleeding thumb, bleeding throat, bleeding memories.

XxXxX

Roger hated not being in control, and here was the epitome of being useless, being absolutely unable to do anything.

Catherine was crying softly beside him, two detectives sitting across the table – from Gill Murray's syndicate, he seemed to remember – talking equally softly about how they knew it was hard and how they'd do everything they could.

Janet Scott, that was the woman's name; the way the Geoff Hastings case had unravelled had been horrendous, he still remembered it now. He remembered seeing Gill well and truly lose her rag; it was over something small one of her officers had done, but he'd seen in her eyes how hard it had hit her, the attack on DC Scott. Gill was a good leader, she really did care for the wellbeing of her syndicate.

"We got the results back from some of the tests we did," Janet was saying, her warm eyes flitting between Roger and Catherine, "And we don't think Natalie was sexually assaulted before she was killed."

"How can you only _think _she wasn't?"

"Well, Ms. Johnson, obviously the tests can't be one hundred percent accurate. And if they were, he might've– he might have used protection. We know he was very careful with leaving evidence at the scene. Or maybe she was killed because she wouldn't give him what he wanted, sexually."

"She was _eighteen_."

"I know she was. We're really sorry."

"What are you sorry for? You being sorry isn't going to bring her back."

"Come on, now, Catherine," Roger said hoarsely, reaching out for her hand, "None of this is their fault."

"No, it's your bloody fault, isn't it, Roger? If you hadn't left, she would've had a stable upbringing, we would have been a proper family. If you hadn't spent every hour under the sun and every hour under the moon in your beloved office doing your beloved job, she wouldn't have had all these stupid ideas, all that stuff about how she wanted to be a police officer too, and then maybe–"

The silence that followed as she trailed off highlighted to everyone in the room just how many flaws that argument contained.

"Sorry, I'm so sorry," she said, leaning into him and allowing him to stroke her hair, "I don't mean it, she was just inspired by you, she–"

"It's alright. It's alright."

XxXxX

Gill crouched down beside the body of Hazel Jordan again as forensics officers buzzed around her taking photographs and talking in low voices about blood splatter patterns. Sixteen years old, her life had barely even begun; at sixteen Sammy had been a spotty little kid who liked computer games.

They'd found Natalie Johnson on Monday night, and Hazel Jordan last night, Tuesday. It was approaching dusk now (so much for getting back to the office for a briefing at three o'clock), and they had nothing on either killing. Someone was very bloody clever and very bloody sick in the head. It frightened her that another young girl might be killed again tonight, that it might go on all week.

It might become known in history as the Weekday Killings or something; it might end up being as publically discussed and as feared as the Moors Murders. What must it be like to be a young girl tonight, she wondered, a girl who couldn't go home and have beans on toast and put their little siblings to bed, vulnerable girls who could only stay alive if they were paid for pleasing old men whose wives didn't satisfy them.

She knew it was all over the news already. If she could think of something like the Weekday Killings, then the vultures could, they weren't all thick as wood. Headlines describing the way the girls were brutally beaten; these details were always leaked to the press, no matter how hard Gill tried to contain the details. Natalie Johnson and Hazel Jordan wouldn't have names any more, they would be words, mythical characters almost, 'Monday' and 'Tuesday' after their final days.

Gill touched Hazel's cold wrist, "What happened to you?"

XxXxX


	7. Chapter 7

**Hopefully this chapter will be a bit of light Janet/Rachel relief from the murders… or maybe not;')**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 7**

"Janet Scott, MIT, how can I help you?"

"It's Julie."

"Oh, hi Julie," Janet said, louder, no doubt because Rachel was looking at her inquisitively trying to guess who was phoning, "Sorry, I didn't recognise your number."

Julie's mobile phone was still upstairs, she'd had to trawl through her phonebook, all of the words blurring, until she found the number for Gill's syndicate. Would probably have been easier to ring the main switchboard for the police force, but she hadn't thought of that, she was struggling to think of anything at the moment.

"Gill's not back yet, I'm afraid. She was held up at the crime scene. I'll get her to ring you as soon as we've had our briefing."

"No, it's– it's you I wanted to–"

"Your cough still sounds really bad," Janet sympathised, "You wanted to talk to me? You're not missing much; we've got no leads at the moment. Everything leads to more dead ends, everyone's a bit demotivated."

"Could I ask you–" She wished she could stop coughing, just for a couple of minutes, just to get her breath back. "A favour?"

"I can't promise I can help, but go ahead."

"Would you– I know you're working, but would you be able to– bring me some Paracetamol– I've run out."

"Have you not got anything else? Ibuprofen or something? No, I suppose you only really have a fully stocked medical cupboard once you have kids," Janet laughed, "You sound awful. Do you think you should see a doctor?"

In actual fact, Julie did have a first aid box with several different brands of painkillers in it, but it was in the top cupboard, and she didn't want to risk falling from the chair. She'd tried to stand up to get a drink earlier and narrowly avoided falling heavily against the bookshelves. Maybe it would be quite nice to be knocked out for a few hours, mind.

_Once you have kids_. Why was everyone determined to rub in what she didn't have today, what she'd lost?

"I'm sure it's just– it'll pass."

"Well, I'll bring you some Paracetamol round, I don't want you to be suffering," the DC said kindly, "To tell you the truth, it'll be nice to get some air for a bit, it's really stuffy in here and we're not getting anywhere."

XxXxX

"You're taking some Paracetamol round?" Rachel asked incredulously, "Does she not have any Paracetamol of her own?"

"Apparently not."

"But you're working. Gill will go mad if she gets back and you're not here, ready to tend to her every need."

"Since when did you care what Gill got mad about?" Janet laughed, logging off the computer and wrapping her scarf around her neck, "Anyway, Julie's her friend, she should appreciate the favour, seeing as she's too busy to ring her."

"Why can't Julie get someone from her own syndicate to go round, if she really needs this Paracetamol?"

"I don't know, Rachel."

Janet could see in Rachel's eyes that she'd said that rather more sharply than she'd intended to. She'd been here since the early hours of the morning, everyone had; they were all worked up and worn out and desperate for a breakthrough. Janet really didn't want to fall out with Rachel, especially not in the middle of a stressful case when they relied on one another's support.

"Anyway, she sounded like she was in quite a bad way, I'm a bit worried about her," Janet shrugged on her coat and stood up, "Are you coming? We'll get some coffee from the shop on the way back."

"As long as you pay."

On the drive to Julie's house (Janet had popped in a couple of times with Gill; the first time she'd been surprised by how modest it was, considering Julie must be earning a fair amount of money and had no kids to make her bankrupt) Janet and Rachel bickered over the choice of music, and then over what was the best type of Quality Street.

When they found the street, Rachel voiced Janet's first thoughts exactly, "Quite small considering she's rich, isn't it?"

"Well, maybe she has a holiday cottage in Switzerland as well, I've never really talked to her about her financial status."

"Surely you wouldn't have a holiday cottage in Switzerland. One in the South of France might be quite nice, although I'd prefer America."

"Oh, I can just imagine that, Rachel Bailey conquering Hollywood," Janet smirked, having to blink away a sudden image of Rachel dressed in a feather boa and very little else. _Where the hell did that come from?_

"We going in or what, then?"

"Yeah, but be nice to her, she's not feeling very well."

"Got it," Rachel said, opening her car door without checking for approaching traffic and earning a rude gesture from a man on a motorbike.

Nobody answered the door when Janet rang the doorbell.

"She's probably gone in the bath or something. That'd be just like her, making us hang around like loonies on her doorstep whilst she covers herself in bubbles."

"Rachel, I just told you to be nice," Janet crouched down and shouted in through the letterbox, "Julie, it's Janet, I've brought your Paracetamol."

"Now you sound like a drug dealer."

"Shut up and check round the back."

"Oh, come on, she's a copper, surely she's not going to have left the back door open," Rachel grumbled.

Janet shielded her eyes and peered into Julie's front room, but she couldn't see anything, just a cushion abandoned in the middle of the sofa. Maybe Rachel was right, maybe she'd gone upstairs or something.

"_Janet_," Rachel yelled.

Janet ran around the back and found Rachel standing on a garden bench, hammering on the kitchen windows. Julie was sprawled out on the kitchen floor, face down.

Janet forced herself to breathe out, "Is that blood?"

"I don't know, there's a tin of soup on the side but I can't see whether it's–" Rachel shook her head and hit the window again, "Come on, Ma'am, wake up, we need you to open the door for us."

"We won't be able to force the door, she's a police officer," Janet muttered. Normally it was a good thing to have reinforced windows; it seemed less good when your boss was unconscious and you couldn't get to her. "Call for an ambulance. I'll ring Gill."

"Yes, Janet, I know I'm late, I'm coming in a few minutes, once I've–" Gill sighed, but Janet cut her off quickly.

"No, it's not that. We've just come round to Julie's house to– well, I'll explain later, but we think she's fallen or something, she's unconscious and we can't force open the door. We're waiting for the ambulance now."

"Shit," Gill said.

"I just thought you'd want to know."

"Thanks, Janet," Gill said softly, "I'll meet you at the hospital."

Gill didn't hang up, and so neither did Janet, but neither of them spoke. Neither of them really needed to; they were both thinking of Geoff Hastings.

"I don't have time to give an interview," Gill snapped suddenly, presumably to a reporter lurking near the crime scene, "Bloody vultures. I've got to go, Janet, I need to drive."

"I'll see you soon."

XxXxX


	8. Chapter 8

**Apologies for any medical inaccuracies, I'm not (and never will be) a doctor. Thank you to everyone for the lovely reviews! x**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 8**

"Hey," Janet said when Gill opened the door at the end of the corridor and walked towards her and Rachel. They were sitting on hard plastic chairs, neither of them entirely sure where in the hospital they were, waiting.

"How is she?"

"We don't know yet."

"Tell me what you do know," Gill replied, slumping down beside Janet and resting her head against the wall, "What happened?"

"I said I'd get her to ring you later, you know that bit. She rang back and I presumed she wanted to talk to you, but she asked me to take round some Paracetamol. She sounded really ill, she kept coughing, so–"

Janet paused to look sideways at Rachel.

"So we thought you wouldn't mind us going to see her, Boss," Rachel continued cautiously, "Because you were busy and all that."

"Don't make me feel worse than I already do."

"No, I didn't mean–"

"So we went round, and she didn't answer the door. Rachel went round the back and saw her lying on the kitchen floor, so we called an ambulance, and you."

Gill nodded and unbuttoned her coat, slipping it off her shoulders and revealing scrawnier arms than Rachel had ever noted her boss had before. She closed her eyes momentarily, and then opened them and looked between her officers.

"Did they say what they thought? The paramedics, did they say what was going to happen? Did she fall or something?"

"She'd collapsed," Janet said softly, "She was having trouble breathing; they had to give her oxygen in the ambulance. We really don't know anything yet, Gill. You know how they deflect your questions, all the 'we'll do our best' and 'she's in good hands' stuff."

"That makes it sound really serious."

Rachel only just managed to stop herself from replying. _It is really serious._

"I'm sure she'll be alright, Gill," Janet consoled her, "She'll be back in the office in a couple of days."

"She'd better bloody well be. I can't do this without her."

"What's happening with the case, Boss?"

Gill looked blankly at Rachel as though she'd forgotten all about the case. She stood up, leaving her coat on the chair, and paced up the corridor and back down, passing her colleagues without meeting their gazes.

"Gill," Janet sighed.

"What, Janet? It's not my fault?"

"Yes. You couldn't have known. When I talked to her earlier it sounded like she just had a cold; nobody could have guessed it would– that she was really ill."

"She was exhausted when I told her about the case in the first place, she hadn't slept for days, but I didn't cut her any slack. I was so fixated on the case, on the Chief Con and all the publicity we were going to get. I laughed at her when she ran out of the post mortem."

"I would've laughed at Janet if she'd run out, Boss."

"Rachel's right," Janet said, turning her head to continue talking to Gill as she paced past again, "Sometimes you do laugh at your friends. You didn't mean it nastily."

"That's the thing, Janet, I did. I was pissed off at her."

"I get pissed off at Janet all the time."

"But this _isn't_ you and Janet."

Rachel slumped down in her chair at the tone of Gill's voice. She would've argued back any other time, told her boss to be a little more grateful when she was only trying to help, but something told her not to. She remembered how hard it had hit her when Janet had been stabbed, how she'd blamed herself, how Gill's rationality and aura of calm had only made her want to scream.

"I'll go and see if there's any news," Janet said, giving Rachel's wrist a light squeeze as she stood up and walked off towards the nurse's station in the main block of wards.

Gill sat down again beside Rachel, leaving an empty chair between them.

"She will be alright, Ma'am."

Ma'am, not boss. It only served to add to the tension in the air between them, like Rachel didn't really believe that Julie _would_ be okay at all. She wasn't sure she did.

Gill clasped her hands together on her knees. "When you found her, did she look like she was in pain? Were her eyes shut?"

"She was lying face down, I didn't see her eyes."

"But was she–" Gill shook her head, like she understood how feeble she sounded, how futile fussing over passed moments was now, "You're a bit like me, Rachel."

"What, we both like wine?"

Gill smiled, "You bury your head in your work."

"Because our private lives are shit."

"I prefer 'messy'," Gill's smile wavered; she wrapped the belt of her coat around her fingers, "I've got Sammy. You've got your sister, your brother. We've both got friends. Just don't bury your head too deep."

Rachel had a sudden urge to reach out and hug Gill, but before she could summon up the courage Janet appeared at the end of the corridor again, followed by a doctor, who wasn't exactly bad-looking, actually. May as well make the best of the worst.

"How is she?"

The doctor waited until Janet had sat down again. "Sorry to have kept you waiting, ladies, I know you're all anxious to know how your colleague is."

Rachel thought Gill looked as though she wanted to show him exactly how anxious she really was.

"She's got pneumonia."

"That's alright, though, isn't it?" Gill demanded, "You can treat that."

"I think the symptoms came on quite quickly. Miss Dobson was–"

"It's Dodson."

"Sorry, Miss Dodson was sort of her own worst enemy, you could say, by not seeking medical advice; she probably thought it was flu and would go away on its own," he said, "Unfortunately we think there's a complication, which is something called pleurisy."

"And that is?"

"Where the lining between your lungs and your ribcage," he brought his hand up to his chest and demonstrated where the lining was, "Becomes inflamed. She's got fluid building up around her lungs, which is making it difficult for her to breathe."

"But you can treat it?" Janet asked.

Rachel noticed how both Janet and Gill asked the questions almost rhetorically, like they didn't want to give the doctor any other option but to say 'yes'. Gill's hands were still clenched together in her lap.

"Yes," he said, "We should be able to. At the moment she's on a ventilator, though, she was really struggling to breathe. That probably makes it sounds worse than it really is; she's healthy other than the pneumonia, so once the antibiotics begin to work she should recover quite quickly."

"Can we see her?"

"She's conscious now, but she's really drowsy, I don't want her to have any stress or confusion. She said something about a child, she seemed quite worked up about it. Does that mean anything to any of you?"

"She doesn't have any children of her own. She was working on a case involving two children being murdered earlier in the week, it can get upsetting," Janet said quietly.

Rachel and Gill exchanged a glance; Gill's eyes seemed to say_ another one who buries her head in the sand._

"We'll wait here, Gill, if you want to go," Janet added, again not really giving the doctor an option.

He wrinkled his nose (which made him look even more fit, Rachel thought), "Just for a couple of minutes. Maybe you should avoid talking about work."

"Of course. I just want to see her."

XxXxX


	9. Chapter 9

**As per usual, I'm making this up as I go along (which is a stupid thing to say, because that's what all writers do), so thank you for bearing with me.**

**And again, thank you so much for your reviews. They make me both happy and productive.**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 9**

"A man contacted Hazel Jordan via her Facebook page two weeks ago," Kevin announced to the office, unable to keep the discovery to himself, "Natalie Johnson's was really private, nobody could see her profile or anything, she barely used it anyway. But Jordan's wasn't protected."

Pete and Lee craned their necks to see the screen having decided their own fruitless work was far less interesting than Kevin's. Pete said for Mitch's benefit, "Her profile picture's the sort that would attract unwanted attention. Although possibly it was wanted, in Jordan's case."

"Who's the bloke, then?" Lee asked as Mitch abandoned his paperwork and wandered across to look too.

"Martin Dawson," Kevin said, his voice conveying his pride at the fact everyone had stopped what they were doing to listen to him, "He sent her a few messages. She ignored them, so he sent her a picture of his cock."

"Oh, lovely."

"_You can call me Mart_. Oh, doesn't it just make you embarrassed?"

"It might be nowt," Kevin shrugged, "But it's better than having nothing to show the boss. I'll try putting Martin Dawson into Crimint."

"It tells us she was a bit of a lost soul, like Gill thought," Pete said, "Maybe she would've been easily swayed to go with someone if they approached her."

"Have they done the post mortem on Jordan yet? I thought that was this afternoon, but then there was all that fuss about Gill staying at the crime scene."

"Where did Janet and Rachel actually go?"

"To see Julie," Kevin said, delighted to know this too.

"Julie Dodson? I thought she'd been sent home in disgrace after candyfloss-gate."

"I tried ringing Janet about half an hour ago, but it went to voicemail," Mitch sighed, "It's nearly seven now."

"I want to go home for tea."

"You having Turkey Dinosaurs, Kev?"

Mitch rolled his eyes. Working with these people was tiring enough when the women were around to dilute their presence; when it was an exclusively male environment, it got almost unbearable after a while. "I'll try Janet again."

He put the phone on speaker when she picked up, "It's only me, Janet. We just wanted to check when you'd be back, and if you'd heard from Gill."

"Kev's getting a bit impatient," Lee added over Mitch's shoulder, "Apparently he's got Turkey Dinosaurs for his tea tonight."

"I'm having curry," Kevin grumbled, "And toffee cheesecake."

"Hi," Janet normally teased Kevin as much as the rest of them, but she sounded distracted, disinterested, "The briefing's been postponed to tomorrow morning now, so you should probably all get off home."

"Well, thanks for letting us know."

"Sorry, I was going to ring you, but you know you can't use phones in hospitals, and I had to wait until–"

"Hospital?" Lee repeated.

"Shut up and let her explain."

"Julie collapsed and we had to call an ambulance. Me and Rachel had to wait here until Gill arrived."

"Really?" Mitch noted that Kevin's tone wasn't proud or annoyed any more, it was shocked, verging on frightened. _Bitch from the Black Lagoon who isn't really such a bitch, when it comes down to it. _"Is she okay?"

"She's got pneumonia, but it's complicated, she's got liquid in her lungs or something, she's got to have oxygen and antibiotics."

"But she will be okay?"

"The doctor says she should get better quite quickly once the antibiotics start to work. He said she was a bit drowsy and confused at the moment. Gill's with her now. I should probably go back inside and find Rach."

"Yeah," Mitch said.

"I'll text you all if anything else happens. Otherwise the briefing's at eight."

"Tell her to get better soon."

"I will," Janet promised Kevin, "See you tomorrow."

Nobody was joking about Turkey Dinosaurs as the remainder of Syndicate Nine packed up their things and left the office. Kevin looked more like a child than a police officer as he turned off the lights in Gill's office and lingered in the doorway, no doubt remembering the last time Julie had been here, when he'd grumbled about having to make her a coffee because she was 'too lazy to get off her fat arse'.

It was funny what it did to you when your colleagues were hurt, Mitch thought; the silence in the office when they'd all found out about Janet had been painful. None of them really knew Julie that well, aside from Gill, but of course Kevin had been in her syndicate before he'd come here. It didn't matter that they'd hated each other with a passion; the connection you felt with your colleagues when you worked in a job like this was one Mitch couldn't explain to anyone.

"Night, Kevin."

"Night," he said quietly as he left.

Mitch didn't think the toffee cheesecake would be eaten tonight.

When he was the only one left in the office, he went across to Kevin's computer (he hadn't even logged off, but Mitch didn't imagine Gill would give much thought to security in her syndicate tonight, despite her usual rants) and searched 'Martin Dawson' in Crimint, a task abandoned by Kevin after the phone call.

He narrowed down the search and compared the photos to the profile picture of the man who'd sent the messages to Hazel Jordan. One of them matched. He was twenty two, lived in Manchester and had two convictions, one for being drunk and disorderly, the other for being in possession of indecent images.

It wasn't really comparable to the murder of two young girls, but, as Kevin had said, at least they'd have something to show Gill for their efforts. From what Janet had said, it sounded like they'd all need cheering up tomorrow morning.

XxXxX


	10. Chapter 10

**Yesterday was wonderful.**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 10**

"Hello, you," Gill said, sitting down at Julie's bedside and lifting her hand towards Julie's, then letting it drop back down to her knee again, like she was unsure whether to touch her, whether it would be an intrusion.

Julie said nothing. Gill wasn't sure whether she was, as the doctor had suggested she may be, too 'drowsy' to reply, or merely choosing not to.

"Why didn't you tell me how bad it was?"

The answer didn't need to be spoken, Gill could feel it reverberating around the hospital room. _You wouldn't have listened anyway._

Every time Gill saw someone in a hospital bed she was struck by how vulnerable the blue gowns could make them look, but it was worse than that with Julie; the emotion at seeing her best friend lifeless was a physical pain in her gut.

"I should've known something was wrong," she said quietly, "I said to Janet, you've seen more dead bodies than I have, you're tougher than I am. I should've done something when you ran out of that post-mortem."

Julie's hands, laced together on her stomach, like funeral directors often laid them when they placed bodies in coffins, twitched slightly.

"I should've taken you to that little café and bought you a coffee, or a hot chocolate or something. I mean, I'm supposed to be your friend, friends don't– they don't just turn away when they're busy, do they? We're been friends for, God, decades, I know you don't make stuff up for nothing."

Gill laced her own hands together and brought them up to her forehead, wiping her fringe from her face, spooked by the silence in the room. She wanted something to blot out the buzzing of the generator, she wanted to hear Julie laugh.

"The doctor said you were getting a bit worried about the case. It's alright, we're just about coping without you so far. We haven't got anywhere yet, maybe we would've done if you were– well, anyway, I'll hold the fort until you're back on your feet."

Julie moved her hand up to her face slowly, like every fraction of movement hurt her, and dislodged the oxygen mask slightly.

"Don't try and do that," Gill said, finding her voice was suddenly weaker. She pushed the mask back over her friend's nose and mouth. "You need it."

"Daft cow."

Gill was too surprised to say anything for a moment. "Who? Me?"

"Me."

"Nah," Gill said, reaching out and touching Julie's hand, "Not really. Well, a bit daft, not going to the doctors or something, but not really."

Julie looked frustrated, wanting to say something but not having enough energy to form a coherent explanation.

Gill said, "If Janet hadn't come round–"

"Don't."

The lump formed in her throat again, like it had when Janet had first rung her, and she couldn't dislodge it. "I'm sorry."

Julie's eyes flickered with amusement. "Soppy cow."

"You're daft and I'm soppy? Sounds about right."

"Will you get me some stuff?"

"Course," Gill agreed, glad to steer the conversation away from her guilt, "It'll give me an opportunity to see your duck pyjamas again, how could I refuse?"

"Where did they– my clothes?"

Gill stood up and went to the cabinet at the end of the room. "They're here. Covered in soup, naturally. You gave Janet and Rachel the shock of their lives when they saw you; they thought it was blood."

"I knocked the can."

With her face turned away from Julie, she took a few moments to compose herself. _If Janet hadn't come round–_ They could have been burying a Detective Superintendent as well as the Chief Con's daughter, all because she'd been too concerned with a case, too worried by what failure to catch the murderer might mean for her career.

She wasn't sure she could ever have forgiven herself for Julie's death; the image of a coffin littered with roses took the breath from inside of her and replaced it with shivers.

"Don't feel bad, Gill."

"I don't." She felt betrayed by her voice's hoarseness.

"Do so. Left pocket."

Gill pressed her fingers into the folds of Julie's jacket and found a photograph, miraculously unscathed by the tomatoes. Julie reached out a hand for it, and Gill took it across to her, gave it to her along with an unasked question.

Julie said nothing, so Gill sat down beside her again and leant on the mattress so that she was closer to Julie; her friend shuffled along the pillow and her hair brushed Gill's arm. They looked together at the photograph of the cardigan, the socks and the locket, laid out proudly together.

"I've never told you."

Gill closed her eyes. "Never told me what?"

"Never married. No kids."

"And you– Julie, you–"

"Long time ago," Julie said, like it was insignificant, only her eyes told a different story, "You're lucky, with Sammy."

"I'm really sorry."

Julie's mouth twitched slightly again behind the mask.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She sounded like a police officer, not a best friend. "You know, I could–"

"Another time."

She nodded. "You should get some sleep. And so should I, come to think of it; got a briefing at eight tomorrow morning."

"At least I have," Julie stopped, like it was causing her pain to speak again, "I have an excuse to miss it."

"I suppose I'll let you off."

Gill didn't have the same sort of relationship with Julie as Janet and Rachel had, she didn't do hugs, chocolates, big gestures. But she loved her.

She stood the photo from Julie's hand and propped it up on the bedside table, next to her water glass. "Was it a boy or a girl?"

"Boy. Was going to call him James."

"How long–"

"Twenty one years."

Gill nodded slowly, imagined how different Julie's life could have been if she'd had a son, how their friendship would have had a different dynamic altogether, discussing nappies rather than getting pissed. Her child – James – would have been a couple of years older than Sammy, they could have gone to the park together.

She ran her hands gently through Julie's hair, took out the tomatoey tangles.

"_I am 16, going on 17_," she sang softly, "Only you're not. You're not bloody indestructible any more."

"I'm not sure I ever was, Gill."

XxXxX


	11. Chapter 11

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 11**

Rachel wondered, whilst twiddling her pen between her fingers in an attempt to look as though she was paying attention to Gill, when this was going to end. When Gill was going to release them from her clutches (she called the press 'vultures', but it was also rather an apt description of DCI Murray herself, when she was in this sort of mood) so that she could go outside and have a fag.

"Are we just going to sit back and let this continue forever?"

Someone had put two plates of doughnuts on the table before the briefing this morning, presumably in an attempt to sweeten up Gill's mood. Heaven help them if this was sweet. Syndicate Nine were seated around the table: at the top end sat Gill, with Janet on one side and Rob on the other. The doughnuts in front of them had not been touched, and yet the plate at this end – which Rachel, Kevin, Lee, Mitch and Pete were gathered around – was entirely empty. Rachel couldn't think how this had come about.

She was trying to think of an appropriate excuse for needing another doughnut ("I'm diabetic, Boss", perhaps) when a file hit her in the face.

"Three children have been murdered in the past three days, and all you can think to do is drool over the bloody doughnuts," Gill yelled at her.

She brought a hand up to her cheek and felt blood on it, the combination of insult and injury had winded her. Kevin couldn't hold back his amusement any longer; Rachel stormed out of the room and slammed the door to the soundtrack of childish giggling.

She went to the toilets. Of course; where else did anyone go when they were upset? It was a universally acknowledged fact that every woman in the universe would go to the bathrooms and sit hunched up on a toilet seat wiping their eyes with rough toilet roll when something was wrong and they needed to be alone.

It wasn't just the cut on her face, she wasn't that feeble. Rachel knew that Gill had a lot going on at the moment, what with Dodson being in hospital and a high-profile murder case to preside over, but what right did she have to assault one of her officers when it was her own fault the aforementioned officer's attention was wandering?

"Rach." Janet knocked on the door in a way that said yes, she was sympathetic, but that didn't mean she would take no for an answer. "Open up."

"I thought she'd send you."

"Didn't hurt that much, did it?"

Rachel opened the door and let Janet examine her face with soft fingers, like she might have done if Rachel was Taisie or Elise. "Aw Rach. I've got some Savlon in my handbag, if you–"

"I'm fine."

Janet moved across to the sinks and scrubbed her hands, speaking to Rachel's reflection, "Hiding away in here isn't going to help, is it?"

"It's not my fault she's so boring."

Janet chuckled, and Rachel realised she sounded almost as childish as Kevin. She leant back against the sink side and pretended to tidy her hair until she'd composed herself, and then let Janet rub Savlon into the cut.

"You should have been a nurse," she said.

"Gill didn't mean to hurt you. You know she didn't."

"Yeah, but–"

"You know what she's like, Rach. You'd be the same if you were in her position. She's got all the pressures of the case to deal with as well as everything that's going on with Julie. Don't take it personally."

"Course, if it was me in hospital–"

"Oh, I wouldn't be able to work at all, I'd be pining for you," Janet smirked, slipping her arm into Rachel's like they were children in a playground lining up for lunch, "You've got the higher moral ground now; she'll be feeling guilty, so use it to your advantage. Be sweetness and light."

The third body, found in the early hours of this morning (Rachel had woken up to the news; why had she ever thought becoming a police officer would be a good idea?), was that of Elena Barton, fifteen years old. The unspoken correlation between the victims had hung over Syndicate Nine this morning like it was written up in black marker on the briefing board: _They're getting younger._

Her mother was British, her father Russian. They'd met whilst her father was working here, and he'd settled down and stayed with her. He seemed to be an agent or officer of some sort, perhaps for the Russian government, whatever it was he did for a living was evidently both important and hush-hush. There was still a tentative connection between Elena – who'd apparently taken her mother's maiden name, her father's surname was something complicated – and the other two girls; nobody had quite worked out if what their parents did for a living was relevant to their deaths, or just bad luck.

Elena had been found outside a block of flats which had been on the police's radar for a long time due to drug abuse. Her parents didn't seem to think she'd been involved in anything like that, but then of course they wouldn't, she was their little girl and she'd just been murdered. She'd been badly assaulted, and they'd even left the fence-post inside of her chest once they'd pierced her insides with it, but her face had been left untouched.

"This is a photo–" Gill broke off briefly as Rachel and Janet re-entered the briefing room. She nodded towards Janet, gave Rachel no attention whatsoever. "This is a photo of Elena Barton, taken last year."

The picture was passed around the table. The other two, Natalie and Hazel, had both been pretty, in an unassuming kind of way; Hazel had been slightly chubby, her cheeks rosy and freckled with youth, and Natalie's face had been spotty. Elena was something different, she had waist-length black hair and large brown eyes. Her tanned face encompassed thoughtful features. She didn't look fifteen.

"Three killings–" Gill said, looking at Rachel accusingly, "In three days. You've seen the newspapers. You've seen what this is doing to the community. We don't have time to waste; we need to stop this, _now_."

Cheeky bitch, Rachel thought, it wasn't her fault some girls had been murdered. Gill was evidently the one who wasn't managing the case very well; she could blame her team all she liked but they all knew the truth.

"Janet, Pete," she continued, "You're with Elena Barton's parents. Lee and Mitch, I want you to talk to the Chief Con and his wife again, and reassure them that we're doing everything we can. Kevin, CCTV."

Was she serious?

"What's Rach doing, Ma'am?" Janet asked quickly, before Rachel could say anything she might later regret.

"She's coming into my office."

Gill stalked away, leaving the door of her office slightly ajar so that Rachel knew she had no choice but to follow.

Kevin chuckled, "Good luck."

"Remember, sweetness and light," Janet warned.

"Bloody Godzilla," Rachel muttered under her breath, taking her time as she stood up and walked around the other side of the table to take the last chocolate doughnut, and then walking towards Gill's office and being swallowed up by the gloom.

XxXxX


	12. Chapter 12

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 12**

"How are you feeling?"

"A bit groggy," Julie said, forcing herself up onto her elbows and running her fingers through her hair in an effort to look a bit more presentable. She gave Janet a greatly diluted version of her customary mischievous smile.

Janet, sitting down next to Julie's bedside, thought that she looked a lot more than a bit groggy, but said nothing. She was only relieved that it hadn't been worse; at least she was strong enough to move around, and to hold a conversation.

"I won't stay long," she told her, "I just popped out for some sandwiches for the team, and I thought I'd come and see how you were doing."

"It's kind of you."

Janet smiled and adjusted Julie's pillows behind her so that she could lie back more comfortably. It reminded her of when one of her daughters was ill, sitting beside them reading stories they'd long outgrown, and thinking how weak they looked; Julie was around Gill's age, mid-forties, and yet she looked so vulnerable here, like a little girl who needed someone to care about her. It must have been a shock to her system, being so independent and focused on her career, to be plunged suddenly into serious illness. She must be rediscovering what it was like to rely on someone.

"I don't suppose Gill said anything about visiting."

"No, sorry," Janet said, wrinkling her nose as she considered what she could and couldn't tell Julie. _No nasty surprises_, doctors always said on hospital dramas. Well, they couldn't keep it from her, could they? "Another girl's been found dead, so it's all go at work again. Although it's never really not all go, is it?"

"Oh," Julie's face fell, "Poor Gill, she must be stressed out."

"She lost it with Rachel, she threw a file at her face and cut her. Obviously she didn't mean to, but you know what Rach is like, she likes to make a big deal of things. Gill summoned Rachel to her office; she was still in there when I left."

Julie gave another smile, more rueful this time. "Who's the girl? Have you got anything on the others yet?"

"She's called Elena Barton, she's only fifteen. It's horrific. No, we're going round in circles, it's driving everyone to distraction."

Janet thought that, although Julie looked exhausted, she also seemed stimulated by the news Janet was feeding her. She didn't want to be left out of the loop, she didn't want to feel completely hopeless; Janet understood these things from the time she'd spent bed-bound whilst she was recovering after the Geoff Hastings thing. She'd felt a deep gratitude when Rachel or Gill or one of the lads had popped in to tell her the latest news, even if they'd only stayed for a few minutes. Being in the police force was a real team game, you needed to care for and understand your colleagues or you couldn't really get anywhere at all.

"I'll try and get Gill to pop in on her way home from work tonight, if it's not too late," Janet said, "It'd be good for her to have a bit of a break from work and talk about something different."

And it'd be good for Julie, too.

XxXxX

"Sit down, Rachel," Gill said.

Her DC strolled into the office and sat down, munching on a doughnut. She looked stroppy and unconcerned; apparently nothing was wrong in Rachel-Bailey-Land besides the cut on her cheek. Gill had to fight the rage rising up inside her, because she knew it wasn't all Rachel's fault. A lot of Gill's anger stemmed from feeling like a failure, and that was true at the moment; she was failing the Chief Con and the families of Hazel and Elena, she was failing the general public, failing her syndicate.

"I'm sorry. About your face."

She hadn't really needed to add that, had she? It was blatantly bloody obvious what she was apologising for.

"S'okay."

"It's not okay. I've just– I've got a lot on."

"I know," Rachel said, resting the crescent of doughnut she hadn't yet eaten on the edge of Gill's desk and giving her boss her full attention for the first time, her voice softer.

Gill realised she must have sounded a lot more stressed than she'd intended to. There was something about Rachel which made Gill reluctant to share her feelings with her. She pretended that it was her bolshiness which made her difficult to confess things to, but really it was something deeper; Rachel was so independent and self-sufficient that, in a way, she reminded Gill of herself. Gill felt like Rachel wouldn't ever tell her if something was troubling her, and therefore by default Gill couldn't tell Rachel anything. It all made her sound a little bit messed up, but then who wasn't messed up underneath?

"How's Detective Superintendent Dodson, Ma'am?"

"Doing better."

"That's good. I guess it's good Janet took her that Paracetamol, otherwise–"

"Yeah. I'm glad you went round."

"Ma'am?"

"I'm sorry," Gill realised her heart was pounding at the thought of revealing anything to Rachel, and yet she could feel her cheeks flushing at the same time, and her eyes welling up with tears. She hadn't cried at work for, God, years. She just hadn't; she'd always wait until she got home to lose it. _Shit_.

"It's alright," Rachel said, "Julie's alright, and we will solve the case."

"You're making it sound like _Cluedo_."

"Aw, Ma'am–"

Rachel didn't seem to know what to say in the face of Gill's distress. Gill wouldn't have known what to say to Rachel if the roles had been reversed.

"Those three girls," Gill whispered, "And there might be two more, or five more, and we have absolutely nothing, we have no power at all."

"We will find something. We'll get there eventually."

"But eventually might be too late, Rachel."

Rachel looked solemnly at her boss, as though considering how she could cheer her up when things were going so disastrously wrong. There was probably an endless scroll of phrases passing through her head now, things she could say, 'it's not your fault', or 'we can only try our best'. Clichés, empty consolations.

She was saved from any of that by Gill suddenly exclaiming, "Your bloody donut has melted on my desk."

XxXxX


	13. Chapter 13

**Thank you particularly to **_**Linge**_**, whose review was lovely.**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 13**

There was no murder on Thursday, which both relieved Gill and chilled her, because what if they were building up to two murders today, three murders on Saturday? They had Manchester in the palm of their hand, thousands of little girls frightened to leave the house for their walk to school.

She realised she hadn't felt this worried in years; as much as she loved her son, he hadn't ever be particularly adept at reading others' feelings, and yet this morning over breakfast he'd actually asked her if something was wrong.

She was worn out, felt like she was being metaphorically thrown around and stamped on. She wasn't accustomed to feeling stupid – she knew she was intelligent – and yet this week she was being outsmarted by murdering scumbags, and it angered her.

The phone rang and she picked it up and balanced it on her shoulder so that she could continue composing her email as she spoke, "Gill Murray."

"Ma'am–" the voice began, and then stopped, as though they were frightened of her reaction to what they were about to say.

Her heart began to pound immediately. She gave up on the email and grasped the phone, trying to sound unflustered. Everything in this world was about pretence. "Go on, then, I haven't got all day."

XxXxX

Janet was texting Taisie under the desk. She was in bed with flu; Janet wouldn't ordinarily leave one of her daughters at home alone when they were ill, but Ade was away on a residential trip with work (along with his 'girlfriend', no doubt) and Janet hadn't even wanted to ask if she could take the day off because of everything that was going on. Gill was at the end of her tether at the moment.

_Granny said she'd come over about 12 to make you some lunch x_

At the back of Janet's mind, every waking moment, was the thought that one of her daughters might be the next victim. She knew how unlikely it was, but she couldn't help herself; she'd almost gone straight back home when she'd arrived here this morning because her stomach was churning so much. In Janet's mind, it was the next step: the daughter of a police officer working on the case. It was like they were collecting victims like trophies, boasting to the world that they were getting away with it.

_Aw mum she'll make me have soup :(_

Janet smiled despite herself and had just typed out her reply _You weren't thinking you'd get away with scoffing crisps and chocolate all day were you? x _when Gill's yell cut through the office and halted all work (or lack of work) as everyone turned towards where they knew she was sitting.

"What do you mean, she's not there?" Gill was shouting.

"Hey-up," Pete muttered.

Janet, quickly flexing her fingers across the keyboard to lock the computer, and standing up, had a plethora of possibilities building up inside of her. One of the witnesses had done a runner. One of the bodies had gone missing. She could tell by the tone of Gill's voice, by the way her silhouette against the blinds paced up and down, that it was yet another setback. Had there been any set-forwards at all?

Gill's voice again: "You were supposed to have bloody officers there."

Hard-as-nails Rachel looked up, concerned. Janet didn't know what Gill had said to her on Wednesday, but Rachel had been smiling when Janet had arrived back from visiting Julie, and since then she hadn't said anything derogatory about Gill at all, when it was rare for an hour to pass without her slagging her off. "Is she alright?"

Janet shrugged and crossed the room, rapping efficiently on Gill's door and sliding inside, then closing it again before anyone else in the office could crane their necks enough to see what was going on. Gill never liked to be seen when she was upset or angry; she liked to hide away. Emotion was a weakness in the boss.

"What's going on?" she mouthed.

"Oh, for f–" Gill restrained herself from finishing the sentence, "Right, well, you'd better bloody well find her, then, hadn't you?"

"Has one of the bodies gone missing?"

Gill shook her head. Janet was concerned by the way her eyes shone with tears, they seemed almost too bright for the dim office surroundings. Of course the case was affecting her, it was affecting them all, and Gill had to shoulder the responsibility for the case as well as the trauma of what was happening, but for her to be crying?

_Her._ It would be 'it' about a body.

"Is it Julie?"

Gill nodded and covered her mouth with a hand. Janet could hear the murmur of the officer on the other end, but was unable to make any sense of the murmurs.

"Okay," she said, putting the phone back down on the desk and then, seeming to realise where she was, sitting down and resting her elbows on the table.

"What's going on?"

"They can't find Julie. Apparently the officer who was supposed to be guarding her room went for a fag," Gill's eyebrows displayed her disgust, "And there was a couple of officers on the front door, but nobody at any other exit."

"God forbid anyone had_ actually_ thought it through, Gill."

Gill didn't react to Janet's attempt to lift the tension. "They're searching the hospital now, they've got the other exits covered, but–"

"Is it possible she just discharged herself? You know, she wanted to help with the case, she was worried about you."

"Worried about _me_?"

Janet nodded. Gill covered her face again, then lifted the phone back up. "I'll try her home phone. Have you got her mobile number?"

There was a silence whilst they dialled their respective numbers and waited. They both left messages, along the lines of 'where are you?' and 'give me a call' when they got no reply. They were used to dealing with things like this, with missing people and the following inquiries, but not with people they knew. Julie was someone Janet respected as well as being a friend, and for Gill– God, they were best friends, Gill had felt so guilty for the pneumonia thing, Janet had seen it in her. Now what?

XxXxX


	14. Chapter 14

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 14**

_There was a silence whilst they dialled their respective numbers and waited. They both left messages, along the lines of 'where are you?' and 'give me a call' when they got no reply. They were used to dealing with things like this, with missing people and the following inquiries, but not with people they knew. Julie was someone Janet respected as well as being a friend, and for Gill– God, they were best friends, Gill had felt so guilty for the pneumonia thing, Janet had seen it in her. Now what?_

"She was really ill, I don't see how she could even have got out of the bed, let alone left the hospital," Janet said.

"Apparently her stuff hasn't been touched. They're not sure was entirely– they think she might not have known what she was doing, she might have been confused, if it's– We need her file."

Janet looked at her inquisitively.

"She– she really wouldn't want me to tell you this, but I don't see I've got any choice. She was pregnant, years ago, and she lost the baby. She's never told me before, but she told me when I went to see her in hospital that first time. She seemed really shaken by it, I think this case must have brought it all back, or maybe she just realised she's got no-one to look after her when she grows older."

Gill's voice broke towards the end of her last sentence. The pain radiating from her was oppressive, it made Janet want to run out of the office and gulp in the air outside, which smelled of Rachel's yogurt and Kevin's farts, familiar things.

"I'll get someone to dig it out," she said, "And I'll ask Rachel to make you a coffee."

She took Gill's shake of the head as an excuse to leave. She recalled what was happening to Rachel, missing out the part about the child – it seemed like an intrusion on her privacy, to make it public knowledge when she'd so evidently tried to bury her past – and Rachel agreed to make Gill a coffee without complaint.

"Do you think she'd prefer a chocolate digestive or a custard cream?" Rachel asked. Janet's heart was warmed; there was a tiny bit of humanity left in the world, even if it was in the form of her wayward colleague.

Janet was skimming Julie's file, rather reluctantly, when Kevin yelled to the office in general, "Dawson, Martin Dawson."

"What about him?" Lee asked.

"He was in contact with the third girl, well, sort of, he was–"

"Kevin," Gill said from the doorway of her office. There was an aura of calm and authority about her now; she was an expert at hiding her emotions, Janet thought, and it made her sad that Gill couldn't even reveal herself to the people she spent more time with than any others, including her son. "Pull yourself together and tell us what you've found out about Martin Dawson."

"Well, you know he was talking to Hazel Jordan on Facebook, but there was no connection to Natalie Johnson, so we weren't really sure," Kevin mumbled, his voice becoming clearer when he glanced up and saw everyone's eyes on him. _A moment to shine, to really impress them all_. "But Elena Barton lived on the same street as Martin Dawson up until a couple of years ago; they lived a few houses apart, they definitely would've recognised each other, wouldn't they? I mean, I know nobody speaks to their neighbours any more, but surely–"

"I could kiss you," Gill said.

"Not really necessary, Boss," Kevin smirked, glad to see that Rachel looked a little put out by Gill's comment. _You jealous, Bailey?_ _Of which one of us?_

"Come on, then, get to it," Gill slammed her hand down on the nearest desk, "Janet and Pete, you two go down and talk to Elena Barton's parents again; they know you now, so maybe they'll start to feel a little bit more comfortable. God knows they need some continuity. Take some photos of Dawson. And Lee and Mitch, talk to the Chief Con again, don't give him too much information about Dawson, but stress that there might be a connection between Dawson and the girls. You know how to do it."

"Ma'am."

"Can't I do something?" Kevin whined.

"Well, you were _supposed_ to be doing the CCTV, weren't you, Kevin?" Gill sighed, but before he could protest she continued, "You and Rachel can do some house to house in Dawson's area. See if anyone knows anything, if anyone's seen anything. But take the softly-softly approach, we don't want to spook him yet; we've not really got anything concrete, after all, have we?"

"Got it, Boss," he said, evidently delighted to be given something important to do, "Come on, Bailey."

"Oh, what have you let loose on the streets?" Janet laughed as she passed Gill. The DCI only shook her head. "Nothing about Julie yet?"

"No. I just keep thinking, what if she's– I don't know, if she was a bit confused, she would be vulnerable, what if she's been hurt, or if someone's taken advantage of her?"

"We're not there yet. She might turn up safe and sound; she was probably just sick of the hospital food and wanted a burger or something."

"She doesn't like burgers."

"Oh, Gill, don't let yourself get het up about it," Janet sighed, unsure of how to comfort her boss. She reached out a hand and then dropped it again before she'd touched Gill's arm. "We've got a lead in the case, haven't we? You need to focus on the positives; let the officers assigned to it look for her, yeah? It's not your fault."

"How can you say that? _All_ of this is my fault."

"Gill–"

Janet moved her hand out of the way quickly to avoid having her fingers trapped against the doorframe as Gill slammed the office door in her face.

Pete, hanging back to wait so that they could go down to the interview rooms together, gave her a questioning glance.

"Just me putting my big nose in and upsetting her," Janet sighed. As they made their way downstairs, Janet checked her texts.

From Dorothy: _I've given her soup._

From Taisie: _Aw mum now she's making me eat some green sloppy thing, I'd rather be puking in the school bathrooms tbh :(_

From Rachel: _Please kill me now *hands over gun*_

Janet made a gun-shaped symbol with her thumb and forefinger, and accompanied it with a whispered "Bang" as she fake-fired it at the staircase.

XxXxX


	15. Chapter 15

**Thank you for the reviews, they're really appreciated as always. I enjoyed the "full details of the extreme hoops" as well, Amy ;)**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 15**

Syndicate Nine were gathered around the table, scribbling and muttering. From time to time one of them lifted their heads and glanced around the room, checking if the only member of the team missing had arrived yet. Gill hadn't turned up – she was fifteen minutes late now, and Gill was never late – and as more minutes passed, it became increasingly unlikely that she would appear.

Janet, standing up at the front of the room in order to catch her colleagues' attention, was suddenly aware how large the shoes that she needed to fill were. Janet had always known Gill was wonderful at her job, of course, she'd always admired her, but she'd rarely been given the opportunity to really discover what it was like being responsible for a significant case, and she was daunted by the feeling.

"Where's Godzilla?" Kevin asked her.

"She's been held up, so I'm going to have to–"

"Where is she?"

"I'm not sure it's relevant."

"Of course it's relevant, I've got stuff to tell her, we've been getting all the craic on Martin Dawson," Kevin moaned, earning a _you-are-such-a-child_ glare from Rachel, "You're a bad liar, Scotty, so you may as well cut out the boring bits and tell us."

Janet sat back down again slowly. Her side twinged as she leant forwards to rest her elbows on the table, and she was reminded of how fragile she was even now, how fragile life was in general. It wasn't fair, it really wasn't fair.

"Julie's done a runner," Rachel said dispassionately.

Janet found herself annoyed, but she knew Rachel was only trying to lift the strain from her friend's shoulders. "There's a bit of confusion about Julie's whereabouts, which has obviously worried Gill because of– it's likely she's just gone home or something, but while Gill's dealing with that I'm going to stand in here."

"Has she been kidnapped?"

"I don't think that's at all funny, given the circumstances."

"Sorry," Kevin said sheepishly, perking up and adding, "_Boss_."

"What have you found out from the neighbours, then, given that you're so impatient to share it?"

"Most people didn't want to talk to us. It's a kind of posh neighbourhood, most of them were tossers in dressing gowns who smelled of whisky."

"I'm surprised you know what whisky smells like, Kev," Mitch muttered, "You're more of a cheap beer man yourself, aren't you?"

"But anyway, there was one old woman who invited us in and gave us custard creams. She said she used to know the Bartons, they weren't best friends or anything, but she said the family were friendly, they would say hello in the street. She said what happened to the daughter was really sad. She raised her eyebrows when we asked her about Martin Dawson, she said she'd always thought he was a very mysterious character."

"Was her name Miss Marple?" Pete deadpanned.

"Ms Jenson, actually. And don't forget the 'Ms'. The house used to be Dawson's mother's – apparently she was quite nice – and she left it to him in her will," Rachel continued with the explanation, "Dawson's mother had already paid off the mortgage, that's how he could afford to stay there. She says she never sees anyone going into his house, and she never really sees him on the street either."

"We asked her to ring us if she thought of anything else."

"Well done, Kevin," Janet said dryly.

_God, I'm turning into Gill already._

XxXxX

"Come and take a look at this," a young PC called to Gill.

A couple of them – both young, handsome and headstrong, she noted; maybe that would be Sammy one day – had hijacked one of the security stations at the hospital in order to search the CCTV for Julie.

He pointed to a figure on one of the multiple screens; she leant down to take a closer look. "This is Julie Dodson?"

"It looks like her."

He played a section of the CCTV. In it, Julie walked down one of the corridors (Gill had no idea which part of the hospital this was; it all looked the same, an endless labyrinth, as though to remind everyone there was no escaping death in the end) and met an old man at the end of it. They seemed to have a brief conversation, and then they went down another corridor (more CCTV) and out of the fire exit.

The image was pixelated. Gill couldn't see Julie's expression clearly, but her posture clearly displayed pain; she walked falteringly, like she was frightened of falling. She didn't seem afraid of the man she met, she went willingly.

"Do you recognise the man?"

"I don't think so."

She hated this, the uncertainty. She desperately wanted to have an answer, to say 'oh, that's an old friend of Julie's, of course, sorry for bothering you'. She wanted to be able to ring Julie up and give her a bollocking for worrying them all, only Julie's phone had been discovered in the drawer of her cabinet in the hospital room, along with all of her other possessions.

"She never goes anywhere without her phone," Gill told the PC, just because she couldn't keep all of it to herself any longer.

"Mm," he agreed absent-mindedly, "It's not a very good image of the bloke, so we're not having much success with the identification. We're talking to some doctors to try and find out if he's a patient."

"She seems to go with him quite willingly," a doctor said lightly, joining their conversation as though he'd been there all along, leaning on the back of the PC's chair and gazing at the screen, "Of course, we've got to consider that she was confused. She might not have known what she was doing. Which means she's at risk."

Gill wanted to hit him. _Of course she's bloody at risk._ She'd been such a bad friend, abandoning Julie when she needed her most, not paying any attention to how ill she was. Shame welled up inside of her when she remembered what had happened in Scary Mary's lab; that incident had gone down in history at the station, and was fast becoming known widely as 'candyfloss-gate'. _And now I've done it again._ Hypocrite._ Why don't I ever learn from my mistakes?_

"We're searching all the CCTV in the area at the moment," the PC said doubtfully, like he understood that Gill didn't want to hear how futile the search had been so far, but he was going to make it clear all the same.

"That exit," the doctor told them, almost like it was a casual conversation between friends at a summer barbeque, "It's alarmed, except for on Fridays between 9 and half 9 in the morning, when they disable them to do something with the alarm system."

"So our man was someone in the know?"

"Either that, or he was very bloody lucky."

Gill, unable to stare at the blurred, frozen image of Julie any longer because of how frail she looked in her hospital gown, wandered away and stood outside the security station in yet another colourless corridor.

The thing that scared her most, which she probably needed to share with the police involved in the search (oh God, it all sounded so serious) but couldn't quite bring herself to admit, was that Julie had left all of her possessions untouched in her room, her phone and her clothes and her get-well presents, and yet she'd taken the photo of her baby boy's possessions with her. _Please, Julie, be alive. I'm not sure I can live with myself otherwise._

XxXxX


	16. Chapter 16

**I seemed to get lots of lovely reviews for the last chapter. It reassures me that people are still enjoying this, which means you've got another chapter more quickly:**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 16**

"No news?"

"Not yet." Gill sounded very distant.

Janet almost didn't want to have to mention work; she didn't want Gill to have to think about anything else when she needed to focus her efforts on finding Julie. She couldn't imagine how she would feel if it were Rachel that had gone missing, and the fact that Julie had been so ill only amplified the concern.

"The corner shop on the Chief Con's road," she said, wanting to keep it brief so that she stood a chance of keeping Gill's attention, "The owner keeps all of the CCTV, he's got reels and reels from months back, all labelled up. Martin Dawson pops up on several evenings, it looks like he's been visiting frequently. He seems to walk up the street and back again; he passes the shop twice each time."

"Does he meet anyone?"

"Not that we can tell. He does go into the shop a few times, he seems to come out with a bottle of pop or something similar. The owner doesn't remember him."

"Right," Gill said.

"Dawson has a connection to all three girls. It's quite clever, really, he never has direct contact, there's barely a trace at all."

"Have you drawn up an arrest strategy?"

"Mm-hm."

"Right. Go for it, then."

"But don't you want to–"

"I approve it, Janet," she said, "I'll deal with the paperwork later. If something goes wrong, on my head be it."

XxXxX

"Pete, Kevin, round the back," Janet called. She and Rachel stood slightly to the side of the front door, allowing Lee and Mitch to prepare themselves in case they needed to gain entry using force. Better to let the lads do it.

"Do you think Julie's dead?"

Janet was caught off-guard by the question, and even more off-guard by the instinctive response that came to mind_. It's possible._ "I don't think now is the time, Rach."

"Ready, Janet?"

"Yes."

Mitch reached up and pressed the doorbell; the button was swamped by his forceful thumb. In the following silence Janet could hear the tune echoing around the hallway. The silence didn't last; moments later there was a yell from the back of the house and Janet and Lee scrambled round past the bins, leaving Rachel and Mitch to cover the driveway.

Kevin had pinned a man down in the flower bed next to the patio doors. Blood trickled down his face from a deep gash above his eyelid, but he grinned triumphantly as Lee bent down to help with the handcuffs.

"Lie still," Lee ordered. The man thrashed harder, hitting out at whatever he could, ripping the roses from their stems in his attempt to break Kevin's nose.

"Are you Martin Dawson?"

Instead of replying, the man lashed out at Janet instead.

"Martin Dawson," she said, "I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Natalie Johnson, Hazel Jordan and Elena Barton. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court."

"Put him in the car," Rachel added dramatically as she left the house through the patio doors, apparently having searched the house.

Lee and Pete wrestled the man away, making no attempts to stop him from injuring himself against the wheelie bin handles. Kevin remained crouched in the flower bed, surrounded by rose petals. He ran his fingers over his forehead and gazed at the blood he brought away as though he'd never seen anything like it.

"Little git."

XxXxX

Once Kevin had finished mopping himself up in the loos (he'd refused to see the FME; it was funny how he spent half his life trying to get attention but when he was offered it he was suddenly uninterested) he stood flicking through old pictures on his phone.

There was one of a mouldy pineapple, and another of a seagull with its head through the middle of a bagel. Some of nights out with mates, brightly coloured cocktails in their hands, girls in short dresses hovering nearby; in some cases he didn't even remember anyone taking the photos. _Good times._

He found the one he was looking for. It was the Christmas night out from Syndicate Three in the last year Kevin had worked for Julie Dodson; someone had suggested they all have a photograph together. They looked a little worse for wear, Kevin's hair sticking up at an angle he hadn't known was possible, sweat acting as gel. He remembered the venue, too, a long, dim room with a sticky carpet.

"With a police budget?" Julie had said wryly when they'd pleaded with her to take them somewhere exciting.

Kevin knew Julie had ended up having to put some money of her own in just to hire that crumby little place. She hadn't ever mentioned it; that was the sort of person she was, a great moaner who avoided moaning about anything meaningful.

In the photo, Kevin had his fingers up behind Julie's head, like devil's horns. "How very mature," she'd said upon seeing it.

Of course, he'd hated her. _If I had a dog that ugly, I'd shave its arse and train it to walk backwards._ Truth was, he probably would, but that didn't mean–

He hadn't cared for her like he cared for most women, in an I'd-like-to-get-into-their-pants kind of way. But she'd meant a lot to him. His mother hadn't been a particularly inspirational figure, and in a way Julie Dodson had been someone he looked up to, someone he aspired to be like when he grew up.

"You'll never grow up," she'd said once, "Although Kevin Lumb doesn't have the same kind of ring to it as Peter Pan, really, does it?"

One of her favourite pastimes was pointing out to her officers the similarities between Lumb and Dumb. "And you all know I don't believe in coincidence."

Sometimes he wondered if she knew how much her opinion meant to him, and deliberately acted the cold, hard bitch by taking out her disappointments at life on him, just so she wasn't the only one who felt shitty. He supposed he was reading too much into it.

Rachel and Janet and all the rest of them thought he was just some imbecile who'd bribed his way into MIT with doughnuts or something, but he had all of the same dreams as the rest of them. He wanted to put the bad guys away. And there'd been an occasional glimmer in Julie Dodson's eyes when he'd worked with her, on the occasions that she wasn't bitching about him to Gill, that said she understood that.

Someone knocked on the toilet door. "You constipated, Kev?"

"Piss off, Bailey."

"No pun intended, I presume."

And Janet. Jesus, were they having a party outside the lavvies?

He wished he could tell them – tell Gill; she was the one who needed to know – how much Julie meant to him, how much he really didn't want her to die.

"Hurry up, we've got you something."

He put his phone away and opened the door. Rachel stuffed a panini towards him; the smell of chicken tikka was overpowering.

"Just 'cause we thought you did good," she said gruffly, "With arresting Dawson and all that. By your standards."

"She means 'well done, Kevin'."

He couldn't help but smile. "I suppose I owe you now?"

"You got it in one," Rachel said.

XxXxX


	17. Chapter 17

**Updates are going to be much less frequent for this from now on, I'll try and write more when I can. Thank you to anyone who bears with me x**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 17**

He found her at the side of the road.

At first he thought she was dead, she lay so still, arm draped over her face like she wanted to hide from the world. He'd prodded her arm and it had flopped down by her side; her eyes had opened and jolted about fearfully for a few moments, before fixating themselves on his fluorescent jacket.

She took the hand he offered her; he helped her to sit up against the curb, then took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was wearing a hospital gown and one flip-flop; God knew where the other had got to. Her breaths were unsteady, shallow, like there wasn't enough air.

He stood up so that he could see the road sign, and radioed for an ambulance to the street they were on, then crouched down beside her again. "What's your name, love?"

She looked like she wasn't entirely sure.

"Your name? Mine's Sean. I'm a police officer."

"Julie," she said. It seemed to be a relief to her that she knew. "My name is Julie. And I'm a police officer too."

"Are you now? Well, you'll know I'm just going to sit here with you until someone arrives to look after you, Julie."

He wondered if perhaps she was a mental patient. Or maybe she'd had a stroke, although she didn't look old enough to be dying quite yet. He'd read about premature strokes somewhere, perhaps it was one of them.

"Did you run away from hospital, Julie?"

"No," she said, "I went with a man. He said he would–"

"What did he say he'd do?"

"I wanted a grave. He never had a grave, you see. Obviously he died a long time ago," she told him calmly, like they were discussing the state of the economy, or whether petrol or diesel cars were better, "But I wanted somewhere to visit. I know it's stupid, but I wanted to talk to him."

Her cough was rough and ferocious.

"It's not stupid at all, Julie. Who did you want to talk to?"

"James."

"Who's James?"

She looked at him as though _he_ were the mental one and didn't reply.

"Can you remember your surname, Julie? I can check if you're a missing person, so that we can put everyone's minds to rest if they're looking for you."

She coughed again as she opened her mouth to speak to him, and when she'd finished coughing she seemed to have no energy left. He helped her to lie down on the grass; her breaths came irregularly, little rasps.

"Your surname? Julie what?"

"It's– it's Gill."

"I thought you were Julie."

She coughed again, and blood came up with the phlegm and splattered down her chin. Her eyes widened like she was a little girl, frightened of what was happening to her.

"Stay calm, love. There's an ambulance on its way; it'll be here in a second. And try to think, are you Julie or Gill?"

"I'm Julie," she murmured, "You need– get Gill Murray."

Sean sat back on his haunches. Gill Murray was the name of Rachel's boss, or at least it had been when he'd been with her; he remembered hearing constant anecdotes about her, how much of a bitch she was. Godzilla, they called her. Was he just putting two and two together to make seven in his sudden renewed desire to see Rachel again?

He found Rachel's number in his contacts list and dialled. He held Julie's hand as he counted the seconds.

"Now's not the time, Sean."

"No, Rach, just listen for one minute," he said quickly before she could end the call, "Is Gill Murray still your boss?"

"Yup." He could almost see her exasperated shrug.

"This is going to sound– right, it's such a long shot, but there's a woman here saying she wants to see Gill Murray. I found her on the side of the road, she's in quite a bad way and she doesn't even seem to know her–"

"Julie?"

"Yes, that's what s–"

"_Boss_," Rachel yelled, cutting him off again, "Sean's on the– well, that doesn't matter, but he thinks– he's with Julie and she's asking for you, she–"

"It's alright, just stay with me," Sean told Julie, squeezing her hand harder, trying to elicit some form of response. He could hear murmurs in the background at Rachel's end, an urgent discussion taking place. "Come on, Julie, tell me about your son."

"What's happening?"

Sean barely recognised Gill's voice; she sounded so different from the woman who'd screamed at him after he'd punched Kevin. Then she had been angry, and now she only sounded frightened.

"I found her on the side of the road, Ma'am. She's kind of semi-conscious, she said something about a son but she doesn't really seem to know who she is. She asked for Gill Murray; it was a shot in the dark calling Rach."

"You've called an ambulance?"

"Yes, ETA's less than five minutes now."

"I'll meet you there." She cursed under the breath. "She's Julie Dodson, she's a detective superintendent."

_I'm a police officer too._ Jesus, so much for a mental patient.

"Tell them she's had pneumonia, and that thingy where you have liquid in your lungs, I can't remember the– Janet, what's that– yes, she's had pleurisy."

"Right, Ma'am," he said. The panic in her tone, and the general hum of anxiety in the background, gave him an idea of the severity of the situation; he squeezed Julie's hand again. "I'll make sure they know."

"Don't leave her until I get there."

"No, of course."

"Gill–"

"Yeah, that was her," Sean told Julie, ending the call only after he'd heard the line go dead at the other end. He cast around desperately for something to keep her engaged until the ambulance arrived. "She says your name's Julie Dodson."

"Sounds about right."

"Gill's my ex-girlfriend's boss, you know? Isn't it a small world?"

"Rachel."

He almost laughed at how bizarre it was that she should understand the dynamics of his relationship when she barely recognised her own name. "How do you know that?"

"Gill was– she was angry."

"She was indeed. I hit one of her officers; you know Kevin too?"

"Kevin," she repeated. Her lips shifted as if she was trying to smile. "Gill's a good– she's a good friend."

"I bet she is. She sounded worried about you."

"Bit dipsy. Flies off the– the handle all the time. But she's good."

Julie didn't respond to the abrasive sound of the siren as the ambulance rounded the corner and spotted them. A couple of paramedics wheeled a stretcher to her side, and between them and Sean they managed to lift her onto it and secure her with the straps. Sean pulled the gown around her slightly to preserve the little of her dignity there was left.

"She's got pneumonia," he told them, "And that–" _Now he couldn't remember the sodding word for it._ "That thing where–"

"Pleurisy," Julie said. It was her last word; her eyes closed, her mouth stopped twitching. He'd never seen something like this before, of course he'd seen dead bodies at the scenes of traffic incidents, but he'd never seen anyone fade like this, like things were shutting down inside of her. It overwhelmed him.

Whatever 'pleurisy' meant, they shoved her in the back of the ambulance and started attaching things to her, some tubes and a mask. He tried to ask what was happening but one of the paramedics pushed past him; they jumped down, secured the doors and climbed into the front of the ambulance. They didn't seem concerned by speed limits whatsoever. He felt a little as though he was on a rollercoaster.

The other paramedic was doing something to her, and periodically he muttered into his radio, perhaps updates on her condition.

It occurred to Sean that Julie's description of Gill fitted Rachel precisely. _Bit dipsy. Flies off the handle all the time. But she's good._ Perhaps Gill would ask Rachel to go with her to the hospital. He'd need a lift home; he'd left his police car parked on the grass verge. Unlocked, actually. Shit.

He was a firm believer in the fact that everything happened for a reason, so maybe this was his opportunity to speak to his wife (although it hardly felt like they'd been married at all, they were so distant now) and show her that it didn't need to be scary, they didn't need to do anything quickly. Show her that he still loved her.

XxXxX


	18. Chapter 18

**I haven't even been able to think about writing anything recreationally for the last couple of weeks; it's even more hectic than I thought it would be. I realised I'd actually got this chapter and Chapter 19 written already, so I'll put 19 up at some point but after that I have no idea when you'll get some more. Thank you to anyone who's not forgotten this story by now, I hope this at least half lives up to your expectations x**

**Thrills, Chills and Goldfish | Chapter 18**

Rachel's giggle at something Sean had said abruptly died away as she saw Gill.

Gill shook her head, hoping to convey that it didn't matter, nothing mattered much at all except Julie being okay. She wasn't angry with Rachel, or anyone else; the only person who'd done anything wrong was herself.

"How is she?" Sean asked.

He had his arm around Rachel's shoulders, and as far as Gill could see they looked comfortable together. It was about time Rachel had some happiness; she hadn't ever had it easy, Gill knew, even if she generally liked to pretend she was hard-as-nails.

"They won't let me go in there, in case–" her voice cracked, as she'd known it would when she tried to speak.

"Gill," Rachel said softly, and suddenly she slipped out of Sean's grasp and put her arms around her boss. It lasted a mere second, and then Rachel pulled away and looked down at the floor, embarrassed at her show of affection, but to Gill it was everything.

"Thank you for being with her."

"My job, Ma'am," Sean told her.

"Yes, but thank you."

"She told me all about you, when we were waiting for the ambulance," he smiled, pulling Rachel back into him, "She said you were dipsy, and you flew off the handle all the time, just like Rachel here. But she said you were a good friend."

"She–" Gill shook her head.

The three of them stood together, looking into the little room Julie lay in. It was even more impersonal than the last, and there were more machines, more wires going into her wrists, more warning signs on the door.

Gill's phone rang. She glanced around the small side-room they were standing in for anyone that might tell her off for answering it (although she was so far beyond giving a damn anyway); the room was deserted. "Gill Murray."

"Ma'am, it's about Julie Dodson."

"She's been found now. You should know that."

She watched Rachel and Sean turn discreetly away and discuss something in hushed tones, giving her privacy.

"Yes, Ma'am. The man who she walked away with; he was a construction worker, he was working on the extension to the children's ward. That's how he knew about the fire door being unalarmed for the tests."

"Right," she nodded, struggling to follow him. She was numb, really numb.

"He handed himself in. She asked him if he would get her a grave, for her son." He said it with a question in his tone, like he wasn't in possession of all of the facts regarding her son. Gill didn't fill him in. "He says he didn't realise how ill she was. She offered him a lot of money for it, and he jumped at the chance. Then she walked off when he was fetching some materials and he realised she shouldn't be out alone."

"Uh-huh."

"Thank God some people still have consciences, even if they do daft things to begin with," the officer said, evidently keen to get some sort of response from her, good or bad, "I think they're going to let him off with a caution, because she's been found now and everything. He was really upset."

"Thanks for letting me know."

"Not a problem, Ma'am."

"They've got the bloke who took her?" Rachel prompted.

"Apparently he didn't take her, there was some misunderstanding about him making a grave, for her–" Did Rachel know about the baby? Gill remembered telling Janet, but would Janet have told Rachel, or would she have been tactful? "They're cautioning him."

"She wanted a grave?"

"I'll explain later."

Her best friend was in intensive care with a potentially life-threatening illness, and she was in charge of a murder investigation where three little girls' lives had been gruesomely ended. Why was everything about death?

All Gill wanted to do was go to sleep, and she couldn't. There were too many people who needed her.

XxXxX

Rachel glanced across at Janet, who sat at the table against the wall in the interview room, watching intently. It felt weird, to Rachel. She and Janet very rarely interviewed together, perhaps because Gill thought it was a bad idea to have only women in the room, perhaps she liked Mitch or Pete or Lee to be there as a sign of strength. Not Kevin, of course; he was weedy, albeit in a tough sort of way.

It was also strange for Rachel to be leading the interview when Janet was generally the one who talked the truth out of whichever tosser happened to be in the blue jumper, but Janet had suggested it, and it felt quite natural, to be sitting across from Martin Dawson, trying to determine if he was a serial killer.

"It is alright for me to call you Martin, isn't it?"

"I don't give a hoot what you call me."

"Right, then, Martin," she said, running her tongue over her top lip and then her bottom. Only those close to her – and Rachel Bailey did not allow many people to get close – knew this was a sign of discomfort and nerves; to anyone else it probably looked flirty. "You were told why you were arrested, weren't you?"

He tugged at a loose thread on his sleeve as though she hadn't spoken.

"I don't know if you have a telly, but you'll probably know anyway, given that it's the talk of the city. Three girls have been murdered this week, and you've been arrested on suspicion of their murder."

"Have I really?"

"Just look at this from where I'm sitting for a moment. You've been arrested on suspicion of murder, and yet you seem to be finding the whole experience a barrel of laughs. In my mind, Martin, what do you think the opinion I'm forming of you is? Do you think it's 'oh, he seems a reasonable, kind man who's upset about the deaths of three children and eager to help us with our enquiries'?"

He looked up at her. Grey eyes, flecked with green. "Perhaps."

"Natalie Johnson was the first girl, this is a photograph," Rachel pushed a school picture across the table, a girl in a shirt and tie, smiling self-consciously. She heard Janet mutter the reference number for the tape. "Do you recognise her?"

He moved his head lazily to inspect the image. "Nope."

"The second girl was called Hazel Jordan. Do you recognise her?"

"Nope."

"And Elena Barton."

"No-ope."

"You're the only one finding this funny, Martin." _Sick bastard._ "Well, it may or may not surprise you to know that we've found connections between you and all three of the girls who were murdered."

"The jury's out."

XxXxX


End file.
